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STEVENS POINT – University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point volleyball coach Abbey Sutherland opted to unveil yet another hitting weapon in her arsenal Wednesday night.

Veterans Emma Brunkhorst, Krista Loos and Sarah Breuer have established themselves in that role during their careers. Freshman Tiffany Stargardt, a Marshfield graduate, has opened eyes as a freshman.

UW-Stout had the misfortune of being introduced to another powerful option — sophomore Gabby Thomas.

In a coming out party of sorts, Thomas flashed her potential with a team-high 10 kills in a 25-6, 25-21, 25-19 sweep of UW-Stout at Berg Gym, extending the No. 11 ranked Pointers' winning streak to nine matches.

"This was by far her best match of her career," said Sutherland, who picked up win No. 100 of her collegiate coaching career, which includes a stint at Southern Mississippi.

"Gabby has all the potential in the world and could be a great player for us," the coach added. "This was great to see. When you look at her experience, Gabby just needs to learn when to be aggressive and how to be a go-to hitter."

Thomas wasn't the only Pointer to enjoy a big night.

Senior setter Alexis Hartman continues to have a senior season filled with career milestones. Hartman broke the school record for career assists against Augsburg and added 35 more assists against the Blue Devils to increase her total to 4,656 and counting, shattering the old mark of 4,397 assists set by Erin Carney (1994-97).

She reached the 500 kills career plateau — remember, Hartman is a setter whose job is to create kills — on Wednesday and moved within two digs of 1,000 for her career.

All of the parts are coming together to help UWSP play some of its best volleyball of the season.

"We had a little bump there, but we've figured it out," junior libero Hannah Picel said. "We were in a weird little funk, but everything is clicking really well right now. And the team chemistry has something to do with that too, and that carries onto the court."

The victory was the UWSP's ninth in a row against Stout and its ninth consecutive win against a conference opponent at Berg Gym.

The Blue Devils came in with a 19-7 record — the most for the program in a season since 2004 — with a pair of wins against UW-Oshkosh under their belts.

The Titans just so happened to hand UWSP its lone conference loss to date.

However, just about everything that could go wrong for Stout in the opening set did, and everything went right for the Pointers who showed no mercy.

"That went pretty well," Sutherland said. "That was not expected. We wanted to come and serve aggressive and get them out of their system if we could. And I thought they were a little timid at first."

Stout turned things around in the second set to get the Pointers' attention, jumping out to a quick 9-4 lead.

Sutherland called timeout to settle her team down.

"We knew they would start playing better, and that might take us by surprise," Sutherland said. "Stout has almost 20 wins, so they've been playing good volleyball. We still needed to believe we can win instead of worrying about what they were doing."

Breuer supplied an immediate kill off an assist from Hartman, and the Pointers were soon right back in the set, taking an 11-10 lead.

Stargardt would eventually put the finishing touch on the set with a kill down the line, and UWSP carried the momentum over to the final set to close out the Blue Devils.

"When you play good defense teams get frustrated because they can't find a way to get a kill, because you're keeping the ball in play all the time," Sutherland said. "The thing that has helped us lately is we've really gotten better shot selection (in attack)."